A Newsman's Tale: From Shoeshine
Boy to Printing the Truth

Even as hundreds of media practitioners gathered May 3 to commemorate World Press Freedom Day, a newspaperman in Pangasinan could not help but feel disheartened by the closure of Sunstar Pangasinan, the only daily newspaper in the Ilocos region.

BY JHONG DELA CRUZ
Bulatlat 

Dagupan City – Sunstar Pangasinan's closure, which already circulated among local media groups early this year, would leave jobless around 20 media workers including its manager, Philip Soria III.

A termination memorandum, released by the Sunstar Board of Directors on March 24, indicated that the paper is “losing” and that it must temporarily stop operation. The separation payments shown in the memorandum are yet to be received by the outgoing staff, however.  

Humble beginnings

Getting off from his vintage 1982 model Mitsubishi car he calls kariton (cart), Sir Phil, as Soria is known to many, gazed at the office that Sunstar occupied for almost 10 years.

He smiles sadly and begins a tale no different from those of poor boys from the barrio (village).

Soria grew up in the pilgrimage town of Manaoag (170 kms north of Manila), conscious at a young age to help in the household by selling Popsicle and ice candy after school. On weekends, he sneaks out of the house with his father's shoe polish to clean people’s shoes at the plaza in exchange for a small amount.

During high school at the town's public school, Soria found interest in writing, using his own experiences to compose essays which he compiled in a journal.

He moved to Dagupan City in 1976 to pursue college. It was the height of Ferdinand Marcos’ martial rule and Soria witnessed the upheavals happening within and outside the local school. He joined rallies and mobilizations that activist students in state colleges organized.

But this was to be cut short when an older brother, an army graduate of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), encouraged him to follow his footsteps. He tried but Soria did not even finish the first year. He left the PMA suffering from shock due to unbearable hazing and congenital eye defect.  

Newspaper years

After finishing college in 1981, he joined a handicraft factory back in Manaoag, forced by the need to support his own family.

After stints in public and private sectors, he found himself manager of Sunstar in 2001 when the newspaper reopened after a brief closure. Discontented workers and writers had picketed the previous management over unpaid wages and benefits.

The paper was like a cripple, Soria said. It did not have its own printing press and had outmoded computers and a disgruntled workforce.

Employees said before Sir Phil took over, they sometimes had as much as three months of unpaid salaries. The circulation was down to such an unimaginable figure that they even refused to recall the number.

Soria seized back one of the two printers from a disgruntled part-owner and started printing the first colored pages of the paper.

"By works of shall we say, miracle, we survived," he said.

Blows

Surge in circulation accompanied influx in local and corporate advertisements that same year.

"It was a viable and refreshing start. We combined all of our hard work with austerity measures such as doing away with the caprices enjoyed by the previous management," he said.

"We started printing colored front pages with our own printing press unlike before when it was used to be printed outside," Soria said.

Asked how the Sunstar's board decided to close down the paper, he said "Honestly, I don't know."

In a letter he received from the board on March 24, the board said the newspaper subsidiary was “losing money” and fewer advertisements.

Soria said however that the ill-fated newspaper had met problems with the new management of the newspaper group. "There were times when we ran out of copies. We could only stare at the wall. Whenever we procure materials, the management, based in Manila, has to approve the voucher," he said.

The more painful part in the Sunstar closure was that 13 of its employees have nowhere to go.

"The writers could move to other newspapers, but the technical staff has nowhere else to go," he said. 

Faith in truth

Sir Phil believes that the lowly condition of media in the Philippines stems from a deeper problem of society.

"The media is vulnerable to corruption yes," he said, "But not if they work in decent conditions that give them more chances of survival.”

Asked his opinion regarding the killing of journalists, he said, "The agents of truth face the barrel of gun because those who want to silence them fear they would be haunted by the public's justice."

The role of media, he said, is to mirror the real conditions of the society, listening and narrating the tales of the marginalized who are usually deprived of space in the mainstream media.

Proof of his bias with the poor was when he refused a local personality's request to pull out an article reporting the abuses against farmers displaced by the San Roque Multi-Purpose dam.

Meanwhile, Soria also runs a wig factory, which employs out-of-school-youth, to help keep them off the streets as well as away from the danger of child abuse.

He dreams of putting up his own newspaper someday, hoping to hire those who will be laid off by Sunstar Pangasinan's closure. Bulatlat 

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